In his first major move as Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney eliminated roughly a third of all cabinet positions, including the crucially important Minister of Women and Gender Equality. This decision marks a major setback for women’s rights in Canada at a time when these rights are under threat around the world.
Carney, sworn in as prime minister on Friday, has justified the trimmed-down cabinet as a “smaller, experienced cabinet” positioned to move fast and secure Canada’s economy in the face of US President Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada and other threats.
But deprioritizing gender equality does not help Canada’s economy, and risks entrenching serious gendered harms. The gender wage gap and gendered poverty and inequality persist in Canada. Women and gender diverse workers also face disproportionately high levels of harassment and violence at work. Much work also remains for Canada to ensure and support sexual and reproductive health rights at home and abroad.
This work can and should and will continue, but it doesn’t need to be a cabinet level position right now.
We have our backs against the wall, and in my opinion we need to laser-focus on our absolute priorities right now.
Should we retreat from the progress made? Fuck no. Should we stop working on this? Also no.
But there is so much urgent work that needs to be done to completely retool and rework our economy and industry and national defence. We need our leaders to have focus to ensure that the steps we are taking are done with urgency and that the changes we implement are having the effects we want, and that side effects are mitigated.
So for today, for right now, I support this move. 100%